Is poetry the winner?/ Lyrik gewinnt?

The surprise was universal. Nominations for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize already left a lot of people wondering about a poetry volume being shortlisted among the year’s top five books. Now, precisely this exotic title has won the prize. Jury member Meike Feßmann described it in her laudatory speech as a “like a thunderbolt” for an underrated literary genre. The verdict in most of the daily press was similar. Whereas some highlighted the “huge surprise”, others called it “a wonderful signal” (TAZ) or an “auspicious stroke of fortune” (Die Zeit).

All commentators agreed that Jan Wagner deserved the prize for his lyrical work “Regentonnenvariationen” (“Rain Barrel Variations”). The air of amazement associated with this seems even more peculiar. Somehow, a statement on Swiss television’s website is the culmination: “Basically, all genres are eligible, although the fact that the jury awarded the prize for a poetry work from over 400 submitted titles either speaks against the other texts – or quite simply for Jan Wagner.” In the words of Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger: the choice was “original and also understandable in view of the rather weak competition.”

The comments are revealing and touch on something fundamental. Where do we get the idea that an award for a volume of lyric poetry is almost a compulsory argument against the quality of novels? And basically that prizes are biased towards the novel as a literary genre?

An overview of the book prizes presented in the past few years soon shows that the novel is the benchmark for modern literature (preferably, it should be about 300 pages long). Short story volumes at best occasionally win a jury’s favour. Novels are published, awarded prizes, purchased and read. So they represent the economic ideal of modern literature. Poetry and epic poetry had their heyday; theatre is something else. And essays? Jan Wagner’s prize is now also extolled as a contemporary trend for poetry – and at the same time negated again. Die Zeit pointed out that the poet, Lutz Seiler, was already a German Book Prize winner – yet precisely not for his poetry, but for his first novel. Spiegel online rounded off the praise for Wagner’s poems with a slideshow: “the 20 most important novels in Spring 2015”.

All this seems a bit strange and farcical. Without any genuine conviction even a work of poetry is for once eligible to receive a prize. One can’t help thinking that the literary business wants modestly to re-invent itself with the oldest literary genre and to marvel at its own reflection here. But is that really visionary?